Red. Such a great color. Children love it, which suggests a kind of primal human affinity for the warm end of the spectrum. And yet, it’s so difficult to use in our homes. Or is it? Okay, we all know from television makeover shows that you need a lot of coats of red paint to cover a wall and get the depth and saturation you¹ll want, so red can be annoying. But painting the walls is only one way of incorporating red. It’s not a color for the faint of heart, but it is growing in popularity, partly because it’s unexpected and partly because it makes a big impression fast.

Being the color of passion and appetite, red is also said to be highly appropriate for dining rooms, and Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz couldn’t agree more. In fact, this lover of monochromatic rooms, tripped the light red-on-red fantastic in this dining-room (above) in suburban New York, where the few materials not dyed or painted red bask in its roseate reflection. 

Red goes extremely well with other colors, in particular its polar opposite on the color wheel, green. In case visions of holly bushes and Christmas trees are dancing in your head, think more modern shades of green. Los Angeles-based designer Marjorie Skouras painted her own living room red and installed bright spring-green chairs.

In Miami, Nisi Berryman made the opposite choice. Her walls are a similar highly contemporary green, and the sofa a stripe that features a variety of reds, from apple to tomato. Sounds delicious.

But you don’t have to jump into a swimming pool of red to enjoy it. This much more subdued Atlanta dining room, by designer Wendy Blount, is an essentially neutral space that is switched on by the ruby Murano-glass chandelier she chose to balance the painting over the fireplace, a gift to the client from her father.

Even bathrooms can benefit from a jolt of the hot stuff. The high-gloss red portal of this Virginia bathroom by Mark McInturff reflects in the room’s mirrors, adding even more drama to sophisticated white-on-white retreat on the other side of the red doorway.

Red. It’s not just for children anymore.

Michael Lassell,
Features Director, Metropolitan Home